As the metallurgist leading plutonium fabrication work at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, Cyril Stanley Smith was responsible for casting and machining the plutonium metal at the core of the first nuclear weapons, work that required understanding plutonium's unusual and then poorly known crystal phases well enough to produce a stable, precisely shaped part. The practical demand to relate a metal's internal structure to its behaviour under those conditions shaped the argument Smith later made for structure as the organising idea of materials science.
Facts
YearSourced to the subject's own account MethodSourced to the subject's own accountLos Alamos metallurgists purified the delivered plutonium fluorides, found that heating the metal to 250C let them work it in the malleable gamma phase, and that alloying it with 3 percent gallium stabilized it in the more workable delta phase, overcoming plutonium's unusually complex allotropy to cast and machine it. 1 Key FindingSourced to the subject's own accountWorking in a race against the clock once Hanford plutonium began arriving in quantity in February 1945, the Los Alamos metallurgists produced the plutonium spheres used in the Trinity test by 23 July 1945. 1 LocationSourced to the subject's own accountThe Chemical-Metallurgical Division of the Los Alamos Laboratory, New Mexico, where Cyril Stanley Smith headed the Metallurgy Group. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Cyril Stanley Smith (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWikipedia, Cyril Stanley Smith, Manhattan Project sectionQuote, Wikipedia, Cyril Stanley Smith, Manhattan Project section
The metallurgists figured out how to purify the plutonium, and found that heating it to 250 allowed them to work it in the malleable gamma phase. It was also found that alloying it with 3 percent gallium would stabilize it in the delta phase.
1. Cyril Stanley Smith (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWikipedia, Cyril Stanley Smith, Manhattan Project section, Trinity productionQuote, Wikipedia, Cyril Stanley Smith, Manhattan Project section, Trinity production
In a race against the clock, the metallurgists produced plutonium spheres for the Trinity nuclear test by 23 July 1945.
1. Cyril Stanley Smith (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWikipedia, Cyril Stanley Smith, Manhattan Project section, division assignmentQuote, Wikipedia, Cyril Stanley Smith, Manhattan Project section, division assignment
Chemical-Metallurgical Division at the Los Alamos Laboratory as the head of its Metallurgy Group.
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